Sysprep, Standard PC, ACPI, Ghost Images

By James | Published: July 9, 2008

NEVER try creating a ghost or sysprep image with your source computer’s HAL set to Standard PC!
I wish I had noticed this critical point in documentation earlier:

You can deploy a Sysprep image created on a computer that uses a Standard PC, Non-ACPI PIC HAL (Hal.dll) to a computer that uses the following HAL types:
 • Standard PC, Non-ACPI PIC HAL (Hal.dll)

Cheers Microsoft, no wonder I was having so much trouble trying to get the image to work properly!

The problem arose when I thought I would be clever and prepare the Ghost Image on VMWare, then Sysprep it out using Mysysprep to select the right HAL type, but then wasted all this time trying to get it to work when it was because the VMWare image had set the HAL to Standard PC (which I was aware of, but I thought that MySysprep was able to change the HAL on deployment). I am currently running a Repair Install of XPSP3, hoping that maybe this time I will get a little further.

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

DFS Replication Monitoring Script

By James | Published: June 20, 2008

I’m shortly going to start work on a tool for monitoring the status of DFS Replication. While Microsoft provides us with the Health Monitor, and you can set up a script to generate health reports every now and then, I am going to develop one that actually tests the replication, and generates some really simple status reports.

This comes after a weeks worth of changes to our accounting package sadly being lost after replication stopped working in the middle of my exam study week. More on that later.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions for this tool, I am still very much in the stage of throwing ideas around for it, so let me know what you would want in it.

I will be releasing it freely when I get it to a working state.

Update (October 2009):

I haven’t got any further with this unfortunately, I got busy. I just had a look today and found a blog post that might be helpful. I’m still hoping to write something to do this more automatically, perhaps this summer.

Posted in Tech, Work | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

ICT West Coast

By James | Published: February 13, 2008

I’ve recently been developing the web side of things for ICT West Coast, which is the title of a professional development programme for teachers that my employer have the contract for. The programme is (I believe) to help teachers to use ICT to help students to excel.

As far as the web side of things go, we will be using a modified installation of WPMU, and a Moodle installation in the background. I won’t be integrating these as I don’t think it is worth the time it would take me.

I based our Moodle installation on the Solstice theme by NewSchool Media, a much needed addition to any Moodle installation!

The idea behind WPMU is that teachers will be creating classroom blogs etc, so to keep everyone in the same place we are providing a place for them to do just that.

Here are the logos I designed for the project

ICT West Coast Colour Logos

Which reminds me I need to optimise one for B&W printing…

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‘Back to My Mac’ flak?

By James | Published: November 23, 2007

One of the features of Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, that was getting many people excited, was Back to My Mac. The service was designed to allow you to access your Macs at home, when you are on the road, or from work. However since its release, it seems that many users are having some serious problems trying to get it to work. (You only need to spend a few minutes in Apple discussions, or listen to MacBreak Weekly to find out…)

I say forget it! I recently installed LogMeIn Free on my MacBook Pro, a service I have used with Windows machines for years and it works brilliantly. If Back to My Mac is persuading you to buy a .Mac subscription, give LogMeIn a try first – after all it costs nothing, and it actually works, period.

Let me list three key improvements Apple would have to make for me to even think about using Back to My Mac.

  1. Tunnel the connections over a hosted SSL solution – in other words, you don’t need to map any ports in your NAT, or put holes in your firewall – you can have a guaranteed connection wherever your Mac access HTTPS websites. Where I live, there is a mandatory firewall on all incoming traffic, I can’t open any ports, so Back to My Mac would not work for me, where LogMeIn works perfectly.
  2. Add a Windows client - I only own one Mac – I can’t afford any more, just like I can’t afford a .Mac subscription. Therefore, I would likely be wanting to access my Mac from Windows machines, either from work, or any of the majority of computers in the world. 
  3. In fact, why not do it through a web interface? - That way you don’t even need a specific Windows client, a web interface would allow you to control your Mac from nearly any web browser in the world. If I’m at an internet kiosk, or other location where downloading/installing software isn’t possible, and/or where strict outbound firewalls are in place, I could just rock straight onto my Mac (of course using an on-screen keyboard to type passwords!) as fast as opening my Gmail.

Back to My Mac is fundamentally flawed in their decision not to have a hosted SSL solution for it, and for the fact you can only use it from other Macs.

Wake me up when Apple start to do things right again; I’m already being driven insane as it is by their AirPort AirDisk botch-ups!!

Posted in Mac | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Watch this space!

By James | Published: October 21, 2007

Just currently in the process of doing a bit of a re-vamp of the blog, might even start to put some new content up

Testing Blockquotes

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
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